Within a day after the California Legislature approved a bill legalizing same sex marriage, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last week that while he respects the legal protections already in place in California for gays, he would reject the bill and believes the issue should be settled in court.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged Sept. 13 that the Bush administration was trying to interfere with his participation in the UN’s 60th Anniversary Summit session by denying visas to his security and medical teams.

Shaw Group, Fluor, Bechtel, Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR are flocking like vultures to feast on the $62 billion or more in federal contracts to rebuild the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. These “no bid” contracts are nothing less than a looting of the public till.

Anna, now 21 years old, was born in the Ukrainian town of Kamenets-Podolsky, then still a part of the Soviet Union. During her early childhood, she led a typical family life and her basic needs were met. She lived with her mother and father, who was an engineer.

The U.S. government announced Sept. 2 that Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, would not be granted a visa to attend the second conference of parliamentary presidents held by the Inter-Parliamentary Union Sept. 7-9 at UN headquarters in New York. Alarcon had applied for the visa in June. The president of the Iranian Parliament was also denied a visa.

NEW YORK — As many as 200,000 people marched Sept. 10 in New York City’s Labor Day parade, including workers from all the city’s unions, anti-Wal-Mart activists, elected leaders, mayoral hopefuls — and People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo (PWW) distributors, who handed out 5,000 sample copies of the paper at the event.

CHICAGO — Fiesta Boricua, the annual Puerto Rican community festival in Humboldt Park here, got a lifeline from an unusual source. Venezuelan-owned Citgo donated $100,000, half of the festival’s cost, so the show could go forward on Labor Day weekend.